Cloud-based, or hosted, computing generally involves executing applications via a web browser, and obtaining information for the applications from a remote server system or service. Cloud computing provides real advantages over traditional desktop software, such as the ability to access documents from various different computers and locations. Office productivity applications are one type of application currently be delivered by the cloud. For example, users can employ their web browsers to edit word processing and spreadsheet documents that are stored on hosted server systems, may access enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, may edit photos, and may perform most other activities that they could previously perform with desktop productivity software.
In a hosted system, users may also be permitted to access the same document simultaneously. For example, the server system may maintain a master document and may communicate changes to the document to various client computing devices that are accessing the document over the internet. Such collaborative editing may permit for an improved experience over systems in which each user makes a batch of edits to, a document, and then forwards it on to another user, where there is no ready feedback loop to correct edits made by one user when another user knows that the edits are not advisable.